Gasps broke out. Then, more quietly, sniffles.
With her hand in the crook of her father’s elbow, Rosa lurked at the rear of the nave, beautiful and terrible, dour and elegant, and utterly magnificent. Every thread of her gown, every fiber of her veil, radiated pure emotion.
Memories, all of them bittersweetly painful, washed over the crowd. Even King Felipe’s eyes glimmered with unshed tears. Niamh did not know what Rosa made of her reception; her features were almost entirely hidden behind her veil. She began to process.
The train of her gown lapped against the floor like cold, dark water. It whispered softly with every step, dragging the petals strewn across the marble floor beneath its tide. Hushed, reverent murmurs followed her down the aisle. That gown, Niamh heard, over and over again. A strange brew of pride and sadness threatened to bowl her over. Was such beauty worth such suffering?
When they arrived at the altar, Miriam approached and took Rosa’s bouquet of red roses from her. She retreated a few paces back, folding herself into a column of shadow, but even from here, it was obvious that she was bereft. Sinclair caught Miriam’s eye across the dais and winked reassuringly. Miriam offered him a brave smile in return. The king placed Rosa’s hand in Kit’s. The grim finality of it twisted like a knife in Niamh’s stomach.
Kit clasped her hand weakly. In Caterlow, the wedding ceremony began the same way. They would drape a rope around their wrists, and strand by strand, they would knit both their hands and their souls together. But nothing happened. Kit only grew paler and paler as he stared at Rosa, blank-eyed, as though watching a well-trodden nightmare play out before him.
With the wedding party fully assembled, the bishop stepped forward. He carried himself with utter self-importance, his nose upturned and his mouth pressed into a solemn line. A golden stole hung around his neck like the pelt of a skinned animal, and a black cap was perched atop his head like a grizzled old bird. Niamh despised him immediately, but she couldn’t exactly trust herself to be a solid judge of character at present.
With a grave air, the bishop said, “Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here in the sight of God, and in the face of this congregation, to join together this man and this woman in holy matrimony; which is an honorable estate, instituted of God in the time of…”
The ceremony droned on. Niamh hardly absorbed a single word of it. Panic and despair made a muddle of everything. There were at least five pauses where she believed something, anything new would happen. But each time, the bishop audibly cleared his throat and flipped to another page in his prayer book. The congregation sighed and shifted. Ivory-boned fans fluttered all around her.
Niamh dug her nails into her knee to ground herself. She could hardly process that this was happening, that she was here, sweating in this uncomfortable pew, as the man she loved was marrying another woman. And unless she wanted to mortify everyone in this church—herself most of all—she could do absolutely nothing. Never had she felt more powerless.
Your magic makes me feel things, Kit had told her. No matter what happened, all she could do was pray that he’d feel all the things she did not get a chance to say.
A low murmuring a few rows ahead of her jolted her back to awareness. The Kings Guard had begun to sweep the perimeter of the church, drawing stares and speculation. They made a valiant effort to be subtle, but between their bright livery and the sabers glinting menacingly at their hips, it seemed to Niamh wasted effort. Her skin prickled all over with dread. She tugged her bonnet down over her eyes.
At the altar, the bishop finally set aside his prayer book in favor of a chalice. Unlike anything else in the room, it was elegant in its simplicity: a vessel of pure, unadorned silver. Sinclair had explained this to her last night. The cup was empty, but Kit and Rosa each held a glass vial filled with water. Traditionally, the vials contained honey mead, as golden as the nobility’s divine blood, but Niamh understood the substitution for Kit’s sake. He and Rosa would each pour their vials into the chalice and drink, symbolizing the joining of their bloodlines. And once it was finished, Kit would don his cloak and enfold Rosa in his protection. With that, they would be wed.
The corner of the box Niamh held dug into her hip.
The chanted prayer blurred into nonsense. Kit and Rosa unstoppered their vials. They drained them into the chalice in perfect unison. Neither of their hands shook. Each moment spanned an eternity: Rosa lifting the cup and drinking, Rosa passing it to Kit, Kit barely touching it to his lips before setting it hastily down again.
“We will now begin the recitation of the vows.” The bishop paused for only a moment before fixing Sinclair with an impatient look. “The cloak, sir.”
Sinclair jumped, startled. He scanned the floor at his feet. When that turned up nothing, he whirled around to check the seat behind him. By now, people had begun to murmur openly. Someone stifled a laugh. Others coughed. The Kings Guard drew closer and closer, row by row. Niamh’s heart pounded against the box, hugging it closer.
“The cloak, if you please,” the bishop said, more desperately this time.
Genuine panic flickered over Sinclair’s face. “Just one moment. Sorry.”
Ready or not, she could not draw this out any longer. She launched to her feet. “I have it!”
The entire congregation turned to face her. Niamh avoided Kit’s gaze. It would strike her down like an arrow driven straight into her heart. She did make the grave mistake of looking at Jack instead, which indeed almost struck her down like a rock hurled at her head. Ice ran through her veins, even as her face warmed with humiliation. Niamh stepped over the other people in her row, muttering her apologies under her breath, and walked down the aisle.
A few paces away, she finally dared to look up at Kit. His eyes fixed on hers with a desperate longing. In that moment, no one existed in the world but the two of them. Under the spell of his gaze the music faded away. The crowds faded away.
And then her slipper caught the hem of her gown.
She strangled a yelp. The box slipped out of her hands, and she left her feet behind as she toppled forward. Shouts of surprise echoed through the cathedral, and Niamh thought, distantly, that it would not be so bad to die at this very moment. Together, they seemed to fall through water, slowly plunging toward the floor. The box clattered against the marble with a sound as loud as shattered glass. Niamh squeezed her eyes shut and braced for impact, but it never came.
The flowers lining the altar and twining through the pews had sprouted new growth. Vines twisted around one another like a rope and wound around her waist. When she blinked open her eyes, she was floating just inches above the floor.
The sound of approaching footsteps forced her gaze back up. Kit bent down and helped her to her feet. As he steadied her, she caught the softest glitter of fond exasperation in his eyes.
“Another high-gravity day?” He spoke so close to her ear, a shiver rippled down her spine. The vines around her unwound slowly and dropped to the floor one by one.
How infuriatingly typical, to mock her even now. She nearly wept at the familiarity of it. Although she had found her footing again, he did not let go of her. His hand lingered, his thumb pressed to the center of her palm, as though he meant to pull her in close. There was something so peculiar about the way he was looking at her. He seemed … focused, and yet, a hundred miles away.
“Your Highness?” the bishop called.
“Kit?” she whispered.
“Your Highness!” The bishop raised his voice, clearly desperate to regain control of the situation. He looked sweaty beneath the sunlight, clutching his prayer book with a white-knuckled grip. “Would you care to rejoin us, in mind as well as body?”
The mood in the room shifted. Everyone was practically giddy now, whispering and giggling in their seats. Kit blinked. “Right. Of course.”
Niamh retrieved the box from the floor and pressed it into his hands. “For you.”
He nodded stiffly, his expression once again unreadable, then returned to the altar. He all but shoved the box into Sinclair’s chest. Sinclair fumbled with it, then removed the lid.
“Wedding-day nerves,” Sinclair said self-deprecatingly. “Where’s my head?”
A few people laughed, if only to break the tension.
Niamh perched gingerly in a pew. She could feel Jack’s eyes furiously stabbing into her, but she kept her focus trained determinedly ahead. Sinclair removed the cloak from its box and unfurled it. Rosa’s gown was beautiful. But this, she knew, would be the finest thing she’d ever make.
The cloak was a swath of dark green velvet, lined with silk and structured with panels of intricate golden lace. Sprays of embroidered nettle and thorns bristled along the sleeves and down the back. Niamh had worked on it nightly since Kit had said he trusted her sketches in the hothouse. But while the design had come easily to her, she never could settle on its enchantment. She’d threaded in countless memories and feelings, only to pull them out again. Nothing suited him. Not well-wishes, not vitality, not stateliness or honor or civility or anything at all Avlish or proper or polite.
But last night, she’d spun and spun her magic into thread. Into every delicate petal, every leaf and thistle, she’d woven a small piece of her heart. Regret at having broken his trust. Anger at his sharp withdrawal. The pain of losing him. The fear upon seeing him within his cage of thorns. The warm, languid peace of watching him tend his plants. The lightness of teasing him. The contentment of sewing as he breathed steadily beside her. The quiet intimacy of a rainstorm, lying side by side as the breeze sighed through the open window. The comforting sadness as they gave their burdens to each other. The giddy joy of kissing him. All of life, in its thousand ways to cut. Everything she had ever dreamed of and denied herself.
Every shade of loving Kit Carmine.
Sinclair held it up to Kit. He slid one arm in, then the other.
The cloak settled heavily on his shoulders. His expression morphed slowly, then all at once. She watched him experience every emotion, every memory, every hope she’d stitched into the fabric. Kit found her in the crowd. In that moment, it was not only his eyes aglow with magic. His entire being seemed to emanate a bright, golden light.
Niamh’s breath caught.
Flowers burst into bloom around them, a riot of color: forget-me-nots and roses, sunflowers and camellias, lilacs and carnations, irises and dahlias, snowdrops and honeysuckle. She could scarcely keep track of them all. They flowed down into the aisle like a long carpet shaken out and unrolled. They unfurled from the rafters like royal banners. They twisted playfully above the nave, enveloping all the guests in a shroud. Petals eddied through the air and settled into her hair like a dusting of snow. For every feeling she’d given him, they poured out of him tenfold, an answer to every question she had asked:
Yes, I forgive you.
Yes, I miss you.
Yes, I still want you.
Her heart swelled with joy and stupid, stubborn hope. The whole world blurred behind a shimmery veil of tears. The guests’ chatter intensified, with shouts of delight and shock.
“Should anyone present know of any reason that this couple should not be joined in holy matrimony,” the bishop shouted over the ruckus, “speak now, or forever hold your peace!”
Niamh let those words wash over her. She had done everything she could to land herself here, to give them both one more chance at happiness. She had risked everything. She had humiliated herself and undoubtedly gotten herself barred from the Kingdom of Avaland forever. And yet, she couldn’t bring herself to regret it. Falling in love with Kit Carmine had been the most painful, most worthwhile thing she had ever done. She would do it a hundred times over.
Kit opened his mouth to speak. But before he could say a word, a voice cut through the clamor.
“I do. I object.”
King Felipe V rose slowly to his feet, radiating a cold, bitter hostility.